Backing Up with the dump Utility

For many environments, dump may be all you need to ensure good-quality backups. To use dump and restore for regular system backups, you need to understand the following:

  • How to use dump to back up a filesystem (with the appropriate options)

  • How the backup ends up on the volume

  • How to get the table of contents of a dump volume

  • How to manipulate the volume and restore from a backup created by dump

  • The limitations of dump and restore

  • What you should be doing if you are using dump on a regular basis

The first thing to understand is what your dump command is and what its options are. See Table 3-1 for a listing of dump commands on various Unix versions. What follows is essentially a unified manpage for these dump -like commands on specific operating systems.

Table 3-1. dump-Like Commands on Different Unix Versions

HP-UX 9.x

HP-UX 10

SunOS

IRIX

Solaris

SCO

Network Appli-ance

AIX

Linux

SGI

Tru64 Unix

(r)dump

ufsdump

xdump [a]

dump

backup and rdump

dump

dump and xfsdump [b]

dump and vdump

[a] SCO’s xdump, a link to xbackup, works only with XENIX filesystems. There is another command, called backup , which is really a link to cpio, which works with non-XENIX filesystems. SCO’s xdump is also missing two options—the b “blocking factor” and the n “notify” options—which are standard on other Unix systems. SCO’s xdump does not support remote devices. Its companion, xrestore , is also quite different from the other versions of

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